The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-12-03
ACQUIRING ENGLISH FORM.

CPShhAhE OA blIC CluC Ol American European tourists, reminds me, writes Cockaigne to the Argonaut, that I happened to be at Waterloo Station one afternoon lately on my way to the Isle of Wight. It was North German Lloyd's sailing day, and luck threw me into the same compartment with a home returning American family of five-viz., papa, mamma, a daughter and two sons. I put them in this order because they were Amer jeans. Had they been English should say two sons and daughter.
 Paterfamilias was a stout, sallow- faced gentleman of. I should say. close upon sixty, had he been an English man. But, to English eyes, Ameri- cans look full ten years older than they are, so I should put him down for about fifty. He wore a black frock coat, gray trousers, wide-open- at-the- throat, broken pointed, faring collar,a blue silk necktie tied in bow, small and neat buttoned boots, ashes of rose kid gloves, and a black silk cap with a peak. On the bridge of his nose was clasped double eyeg,ass, fastened to a narrow, black cord, and in the corner of his mouth was tightly held long "Reina Victoria" cigar. He walked nervously up and down the platform till the train started, at each turn tlicking the ash off the end ot his cigar with that rub-a-dub sort of finger movement, which I take it no Englishman has ever been able suc- cessfully to acquire. Mamma sat in the corner by the window, with her back to the engine. She had that del- icate, soft skin, fine, clear-cut fea- lures, pale complexion, and tired, deep-set eyes so common with Amer ican ladies. She wore a travelling dress of some small check tweed, over which was cloak of the same mate- rial, but different pattern: a most elab- crate towering hat; mask veil, which held down flat her dark brown "bangs" (Anglice 'fringe;;"O brown mousquetaire gloves; and check cloth topped, patent-leather-t boots of size so small and shape so perfect in the profile of the high, arched in- step, that, for moment, I couldn't realize that the boot saw enclosed full-grown woman's foot, until she moved it back under her skirt again. In her ears were solitaire diamond earrings, of quite two carats each, and in her hand, held tight to her nos- trils, she carried cut-glass, gold stoppered, "double-ender" smelling bottle. She had evidently been belle in her time, and still clung to the title with all the might that could come from jealous observance of all those little airs and graces of feminine tenderness and refinement which seem to come as natural to the American woman as do rose leaf com- | plexions, white teeth, expressive eyes and small feet. On the seat opposite, her daughter sat facing her. l need only describe her by saying that she was her mother repeated, but Gas I believe she really was) less than eighteen years younger. She had no smelling bottle, but packet of choc- olate bon bons, from which she ab- sently ate one now and then, as she sat and silently gazed out of the win dow at her left. One of the sons a boy of twelve, in Paris made Nor folk jacket and crimson Yum OShan- ter cap-sat next to her, and when he wasn't asking her or his mother questions, or shouting to his father, was unsuccessfully im- pertaining for a chocolate. The fifth and last member of the party was young man of about eighteen, though he looked every year of eight and twenty. He was tall, slight and dark, with enough of his mother in his face to. give him the claim to the title of handsome. Close cropped black hair, short whiskers and slight moustache made him look by contrast even paler than he was. In his left eye was screwed a single rimless eye glass and he wore a suit of large check tweed "dittoes," with "knicker" cut trousers and coarse ribbed, brown yarn long stockings and laced thick-sole shooting boots. Over his arm was thrown a drab "covert" coat, little longer than jacket; on his head was tight fitting tweed cap to match his clothes pair of reddish brown driving gloves, with a stout blackthorn walking -stick, were clutched together in one hand, while between the finger and thumb of the other he held cigarette. He stood just outside the door and took no notice of his father, or his father of him, and looked for the world, as no doubt he wished to do, like one of the line army officers in the next com- pertinent, going home on leave.
 "Say, pap-ahw (English children always say pop pah and mam-mah.) "Ain't the cars going to start soon?" shouted the boy, who was evidently still true to the land of his birth.
 1 Ilss hso. h,nofhn- A.,r